


L'enfer, c'est les autres

by tanagurablondie



Category: Monster (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Johan being charming, Kinderheim 511, M/M, Mind Games, Morality, Nightmares, Not completely canon, PTSD, Psychological, i know Tenma ended up in MSF, mentions of child abuse, philosophical, slight attraction, this is just a bit of mental bubblegum, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24586651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanagurablondie/pseuds/tanagurablondie
Summary: They would give him a name, and a palm to feed from.
Relationships: Anna Liebert/Tenma Kenzou, Johan Liebert/Tenma Kenzou
Comments: 5
Kudos: 46





	L'enfer, c'est les autres

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist: Mad Hatter by Melanie Martinez, Desire by Meg Myers.

He’s still surprised when the nightmares come. Almost quietly, when he begins to fall asleep, tired from an emergency operation. They fall upon his tenuous mind like a grey shroud of smoke. Silent pollution. He almost doesn’t mind. On some level of rational thinking, Tenma supposes they’re normal reactions.

_I’m a doctor, am i not?_

Names had power.

.

Soon, the hospital director insists he takes a short “vacation”. Tenma figures this is normal, too. The black shades under his eyes have begun to look like bruises. His operations have been perfect and scrupulous, though, so they are doing this to keep him around.

To keep him healthy and functional. His name had been cleared after all, and the media had been too eager to restore him to good graces. Eisler Memorial Hospital had their promising Chief of Surgery once again, beloved by his patients, esteemed by peers and colleagues.

He never asked for recompense, but he thinks it’s nice not to be a fugitive on the run. To settle in one place again. To sit at his usual spot in a favorite café. Düsseldorf was a safe nest again. The very same nest he built his research, aspirations and a decade of his career on.

Still, sometimes he wonders why he hasn’t fled. Johan Liebert was in Düsseldorf.

.

Eva Heinemann visits him from time to time. He drinks with her out of old habit. She tries to get him into bed, and he refuses of course, but she doesn’t get angry anymore.

She used to be so very cruel when angered. A perfectly good picnic basket spoiled, when Tenma liked to bask outside and appreciate natural light and sounds. Textbooks and other scholarly papers missing after a nasty one-sided confrontation. Tenma had never retaliated in equal reproachfulness. The doctor always had somewhat of a passive nature.

Tenma remembers these tantrums with a sigh, and feels that era of his life like a faraway chimera.

Instead, the former director’s daughter smiles a spiteful little smile, and swears never to come again.

Two weeks later, she brings another bottle.

.

He does sleep with Nina Fortner though. It was one of those nights before he’d gotten the sleeping pills. He never had to purchase them before.

_How’s Dieter and Dr. Reichwein?_

Nina’s enthusiastic flair sweeps up the sterile apartment with long forgotten light.

She touches his face with gentle concern, lingers on the delapidation that has settled there.

_They're happy, Kenzou. I can't say the same about you._

He can’t exactly call it a mistake, but when he wakes up to her sweet face and sees Johan’s ironic smile, he knows it wouldn’t work out.

Nina seems to know this, and doesn’t pressure him, calmly eating her breakfast.

She talks about life as a budding prosecutor, and honoring her adoptive parents, whose death anniversary was coming up.

Almost five years now.

Three since her parents were massacred by her twin, two since he fell into a coma.

Tenma had just finished with his morning coffee and pancakes when it came coming back up.

_Doctor…Johan woke up._

.

Rudi Gillen eventually lets him know that Johan had in fact come to consciousness for a full month now.

Tenma didn’t watch the news anymore, and barely socialized since his prescribed leave.

Still, Tenma assumed someone would bother to tell him recent developments, considering he’d spent a decade and some of his life in a complex entanglement with the mass murderer.

Rudi simply shrugs and says sternly,

_"We didn’t think it was good for you at the moment."_

_"And where is he now?"_ Tenma snaps back, strained. He could feel a headache starting to bloom at the bottom of his skull.

_"Where do you think? He’s locked up. He can’t hurt you."_

Tenma really begged to differ.

Oh, Johan could hurt him alright. If he really wanted to.

The heart of the matter was, the doctor didn’t really care what happened to him. It was an afterthought. He was past his prime. Hell, he was wasting away in his empty little apartment room, and he was completely satisfied with that.

But if that boy…no, man, for he was a man now, a bright young man of twenty three. If Johan Liebert ever hurt Dieter or Nina…anybody else again, it would shatter him. He would go insane.

The nightmares were nothing.

.

When he finally meets Johan, he spends a moment or two to take him in.

The monste-…no, the young man still retained some of his unnatural elegance, clad in the simple prison garb. He was older, and his face looked sharper, less persuasive. More mature and accentuated than the look of a polished politician he had at twenty.

He looks at Tenma, his face not harboring any particular expression, which the doctor suspects is his default face whenever he isn’t mimicking any specific brand of emotion.

Eventually a mocking curl of lips appears,

“I hope you are taking good care of my sister, doctor.”

Tenma’s eyes narrow a bit at the subtle implication. It was guessing, but of course Johan was quite skilled at operating on flashes of human insight.

 _It's a stretch,_ Tenma assures himself. _That only happened one time._

By now he knows well not to fall into mind game territory, as Johan is completely comfortable in his lair.

“Nina is quite well, if you’re asking.”

“Ah, doctor. She seemed quite fatigued when she visited. I am glad.”

Doctor Tenma braces himself.

“You should be. You’re not staying here for long.”

Johan looks amused, not surprised, as he places a gentle finger on his chin. A mock thoughtful expression on his face.

“Is that a prediction, doctor? Surely you know that my body’s been stagnant for over twenty six months. It would take a superhuman to escape. Ah, that man did a much better job at shooting me. Did you come to finish it, finally?”

A look of serenity passes the monst-, Johan’s face as he points to his forehead.

Johan continues to sit gracefully on his wheelchair, like it’s a throne instead of an invalid’s chair. Johan has been awake for nearly two months. Tenma half suspects he has regained full control of his mobility. It wasn’t impossible. The boy was a prodigy.

Given Johan’s tendency towards manipulation and deception, it was unlikely he’d ever advertise it if he was getting better. The thick glass separating them provides some sort of safe barrier, though Tenma would have to get used to his presence.

Tenma shakes his head firmly.

Johan cocks his head,

“ _No?_ ”

.

Tenma doesn’t want to hold Johan’s unnatural gaze longer than necessary.

“I’m sure you’re already aware that this isn’t a real prison, or even a mental institution. This is one of the private facilities owned by General Wolf.”

Johan’s mocking smile returns.

“Ah, really?”

Tenma plows on.

“We found it best to keep you here. This facility was made ready for you. All personnel here have been briefed, we made your death quite public years ago.”

Johan giggles.

“All that trouble for me, doctor? Surely you are concerned for the people you’re putting at stake here…”

The doctor’s mind flashes to the events at Kinderheim 511, at the red mountain of flesh and bone in the massacre the boy orchestrated. Johan was implying he could do it again, here. Tenma suppresses a shudder.

“You’re not staying here. We’re going to take you to live with your sister on house arrest after you’re fully rehabilitated.”

And there lies the monster’s weakness. He could not kill his sister, who was the embodiment of himself. Additionally, he would not kill Tenma, who was his savior, whom he respected to some degree.

Nina..Anna Liebert and Doctor Tenma’s decision was made years ago, they would make sure they held the reins to Johan’s fate very tightly.

For the boy wasn’t a monster, not anymore. When handled carefully, he would be tame. They had to forgive him. This was the way.

They would give him a name, and a palm to feed from.

The angelic face before him wore an insolent grin, all teeth and lips. His eyes were a vast deserted plain, endless, endless.

“I see…” he says, humoring them, as if he hadn’t had this figured out in his head before Tenma ever set foot in the facility.

“…but you know…if i ever go berserk, Doctor Tenma, _you_ will be responsible for the things i’m going to do.”

He’s lived it all, in countless nightmares. The names of the lives that would be shed should they fail.

_Hell is other people, after all._

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaaaaaa i’ve been rewatching Monster, after almost three years. 2017 was really that long ago, what? This masterpiece is still my favorite manga and anime, maybe nothing can top it after all.


End file.
